Nano Vent-Skin Demonstrated in Concept Tower

I was pretty impressed by Agustin Otegui’s design for Nano Vent-Skin (NVS), rendered on the building above. NVS is a building skin that uses organic photovoltaics to capture sun and micro-wind turbines to capture wind. Otegui envisions nano-manufacturing with bioengineered organisms as the production method for NVS, and because it’s organic, the wall provides the additional benefit of capturing CO2 from the air.

Obviously, the concept building above would be a new design built to reap the benefits of NVS, but Otegui also thinks the skin would be perfect for making existing buildings greener.

Here’s How it Works: The outer skin of the structure absorbs sunlight through an organic photovoltaic skin and transfers it to the nano-fibers inside the nano-wires which then is sent to storage units at the end of each panel. Each turbine on the panel generates energy by chemical reactions on each end where it makes contact with the structure. Polarized organisms are responsible for this process on every turbine’s turn. The inner skin of each turbine works as a filter absorbing CO2 from the environment as wind.

NVS would be made in panels with sensors at each corner. If a micro-turbine breaks or fails, then the signal is sent through the nano-wires to the central system. Once the message gets to the central system, building material is sent through the central tube to regenerate the malfunctioning area with a self assembly process.

NVS is quite interesting really. Otegui notes that in the future, nano-manufacturing will be a common way to produce everyday products, so maybe we’ll see a prototype version of NVS in the not-too distant future?

I’d like to see this system incorporated into automobiles too, so that if the roof of a vehicle could have the photo voltaic skin and the turbines, the faster you would drive, the more power you would generate.